 Okay, I'm gonna continue reading more Thomas Merton's poetry simply Because the genius most of them they're way too long to read for a podcast and and they're so good and so this is the from the Tower of Babel and I'm just gonna read a part of it. It's from part two the city of God seen one Zodiac seen a riverbank Raphael Thomas the prophet children Those are the four characters of this scene Raphael Once there was a city where these marshes are ships at dockside Barrels on the quay children running between the wheels watching the foreigners sandal Fearing the unknown words of the men with scars Thomas Now all is sand and grass and water Where the rank marsh draws down one crooked gull Men have gone from this place There is neither cursing nor praying nor dancing neither living nor dying buying nor selling No more traffic on the waterfront. No more pianos in the cabaret Prophet The city under the sand lives everywhere It is not a buried city The westward ships will soon discover the old city on another continent young and new The southward ships will find that the city was never destroyed The northward plane soon sees the sun shine on the towers of the same Babylon Raphael The stars pursue their prey across the edge of the sky Time moves east and west Covering the land with light and darkness Life and death truth and illusion The hills stand where they were before the stars pass by Children Washed in winter's rivers ancient seasons come Cancer and Orion the bear and Capricorn Prophet Men were made to be the mirror of God They were meant to be one mirror filled with his one light When will the pieces be brought together again and receive the divine images? divine image children Washed in silent streams the lion and the twins come crowned in deadems With weapons in their hands Raphael Words once contained the silences beyond the stars Words given us by God bound minds in agreement and in agreement made them strong Because they were strong men became free. They were free because they thought the same thing They were strong because they knew the same truth and lived by it working together Children The beast stands in the sky with poison in his thorn The archer bides his time and death hangs on his arm the prophet But the languages of men have become empty palaces Where the winds blow in every room Strange spirits sing in them the ruined houses are hiding places for men at arms Children Washed in splendid rain the bull The fishes come the crab the watermen and put their packages down the prophet The word of god coming from afar is always near Near in the stillness of the thing that moves Near in the silence of the thing that speaks Near Not dead Even in the heart of one that lies His silence is always near His word Is near We cannot listen We turn away fearing an accuser children Washed in silent peace the swan and serious come The virgin with the seals The wind and the bone moon The prophet in the last days the word Wise without omen strong without armies will come to the crossroads of the broken universe Then truth will speak to the dead Then god will awaken them from oblivion with his word And they shall sit up in their tombs and look upon the word Whom they have slain and recognize his eyes Like wine children storms And tides of spring Divide their chains and come The ram rides in their brine stronger than the sun Prophet Do not think the destroyed city is entirely evil As a symbol is destroyed to give place to a reality So the shadow of babalon will be destroyed to give place to the light which it might have contained Men will indeed be of one tongue and they will indeed build the city that will reach from earth to heaven This new city will not be the tower of sin, but the city of god Not the wisdom of men Not the wisdom of men shall build this city nor their machines Nor their power But the great city shall be built without hands without labor without money and without plans It will be a perfect city Built on eternal foundations And it shall stand forever because it is built by the thought and the silence and the wisdom and the power of god But you my brothers and I are stones in the wall of this city Let us run to find our places Though we may run in the dark our destiny is full of glory